AN INDIAN REFORMER (1874-1879) Never to know that you are beaten is the way to victory. To be before one's Government is an honourable distinction. What greater reward can a good worker desire than that the next generation should forget him, regarding as an obsolete truism work which his own generation called a visionary fanaticism?--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1877). Miss Nightingale was in one sense never more in office than when she was "out of office." The passion of her later life was the redress of Indian sufferings and grievances, and during the years 1874-79, and for many years afterwards, she did an enormous amount of work to that end. It was the kind of work which a Minister does, or sets his subordinates to do, when he is getting up a subject for parliamentary debate, or framing a project of legislation. The _milieu_ in which Miss Nightingale did this work was also in a sense official. Her excursions into difficult problems of Indian policy and administration were regarded by many people as unsafe and inexpedient, and this view was not confined to such officials as disagreed with her conclusions. Mr. Jowett was alternately overborne by her enthusiasm into trying to help her Indian work, and insistent upon her giving up most of it. The latter attitude predominated. Indian land questions were not her special subjects; she could never hope to know the ins and outs of them. Her sister was uniformly of the same opinion: "What _can_ you know about such things, my dear?" But, after all, how much does a minister know at first-hand of the business of a Department new to him? Generally, far less than Miss Nightingale knew of Indian business. A minister either accepts the views of his subordinates, or becomes himself a master of his subject by using access to the best sources of information. Miss Nightingale, to a considerable extent, had access to the same sources. She corresponded with successive Secretaries of State and Viceroys. She was in close touch during many years with the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Louis Mallet, who, though he did not always agree with her particular conclusions, was entirely sympathetic in her general aims, and, so far as official propriety admitted, gave her every facility for pursuing her researches. Indian Governors and ex-Governors were at her service for information or discussion. There is voluminous correspondence during these years with her old friends, Lord Napier and Ettrick and Sir Bartle Frere, and with new friends, Sir George Campbell and Sir Richard Temple. With Sir George, a frequent visitor at South Street, she was especially well pleased. "Not for years," she wrote to M. Mohl (Aug. 10, 1874), "have I seen a man in such heroic passion against oppression." Anglo-Indians, when in retirement in South Kensington, are seldom averse from imparting their views, and Miss Nightingale had a retinue of them,